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Samsung Claims New SSDs Offer Twice the Performance

Paul Lilly — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 07:52:01 -0600

The SSD market was moving at a peaceful albeit underwhelming pace until Intel joined the party, promptly putting the smackdown on the competition. Intel's X-25M SSD proved to be twice as fast as other drives to have gone through Maximum PC's lab, helping it to earn a Kickass! award.

Now Samsung looks to follow suit, which comes as somewhat of a surprise given that the company hasn't been at that forefront of performance with SSDs topping out at less than 100MB/s. But that was before, and Samsung's new 256GB SSD not only offers up to twice as much storage space as its 64GB and 128GB models, but is more than twice as fast as well. Samsung says its 256GB comes rated at 220MB/s read and 200MB/s, or fast enough to store 25 high definition movies in just 21 minutes and able to launch applications 10 times faster than the speediest 7200RPM notebook drive.

Steven Peng, SSD technical marketing manager at Samsung, said the speed increase was made possible through multichannel interleaving, noting that "the basic architecture remains unchanged. However, there are design improvements such as optimized firmware, and improvements to the controller."

Samsung said it has begun mass producing the new 256GB SSD, but has not released information on pricing or availability.

Thanks for Contributing to a $20 Billion PC Gaming Hardware Industry!

Andy Salisbury — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 16:53:40 -0600

As it stands, the PC gaming industry is estimated to be worth a massive $20 billion today, and it is predicted to enlarge to $34 billion by 2012.

While many have claimed that PC gaming is dying, they don’t take into account the sales of gaming-oriented PCs. According to Ted Pollack, one of the two men behind this robust estimation, “Retail software figures are not an accurate barometer for the health of the PC gaming industry. The retail numbers don’t capture the casual and digitally distributed games, either.”

Pollack goes on to state that PC gamers don’t really buy that many games to begin with. “Enthusiast PC gamers often latch onto one or two games that offer multiplayer options and stick to these titles for years. Hardware is where they spend the big bucks.”

And yes, it is noticeable that a good amount of the sales went to complete PCs, but there’s also a large market of you that buy your own parts. Many of the sales come from upgrade pieces such as improved graphics cards and memory. And for this, we at Maximum PC salute you.

Holy Moly, Mushkin Releases 16 Triple-Channel DDR3 Kits

Paul Lilly — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 11:04:19 -0600

Dual-channel memory might not be dead, but Intel's Core i7 platform has kicked off the era of triple-channel memory kits and most manufacturers have already jumped on board. Enter Mushkin, who not only is making tri-channel DDR3 kits available, but has launched 16 different models ranging in speed from 1066MHz to 1600MHz.

998674 – 3GB (3x1GB) XP3-10666 6-6-6-18 1.65V
998675 – 6GB (3x2GB) XP3-10666 6-6-6-18 1.65V
998676 – 3GB (3x1GB) HP3-10666 7-7-7-20 1.5-1.6V
998677 – 6GB (3x2GB) HP3-10666 7-7-7-20 1.5-1.6V
998583 – 3GB (3x1GB) EM3-10666 9-9-9-24 1.5V
998585 – 6GB (3x2GB) EM3-10666 9-9-9-24 1.5V
998678 – 3GB (3x1GB) XP3-12800 7-8-7-20 1.65V
998679 – 6GB (3x2GB) XP3-12800 7-8-7-20 1.65V
998680 – 3GB (3x1GB) XP3-12800 8-8-8-24 1.6-1.65V
998681 – 6GB (3x2GB) XP3-12800 8-8-8-24 1.6-1.65V
998658 – 3GB (3x1GB) HP3-12800 9-9-9-27 1.5-1.6V
998659 – 6GB (3x2GB) HP3-12800 9-9-9-27 1.5-1.6V
998682 – 3GB (3x1GB) HP3-8500 6-6-6-18 1.5-1.6V
998683 – 6GB (3x2GB) HP3-8500 6-6-6-18 1.5-1.6V
998570 – 3GB (3x1GB) EM3-8500 7-7-7-20 1.5V
998571 – 6GB (3x2GB) EM3-8500 7-7-7-20 1.5V

"We’ve worked diligently to create parts for the Core i7 platform that push specifications to unprecedented levels while maintaining the high quality and reliability standards of our existing products," said Brian Flood, director of product development for Mushkin. "Our triple-pack customers will be rewarded with the utmost reliability from our standard rated products, and greatly increased performance from our high performance line."

Mushkin claims that each kit is hand-tested beyond its rated specification, suggesting at least a modicum of overclocking headroom. Each of the 16 kits also come bearing Mushkin's FrostByte heatspreader.

All kits are available now at Mushkin.com.

Rumor: Intel to Launch 65W Low-Power CPUs for All-in-One Desktops

Paul Lilly — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 09:51:55 -0600

With all the attention netbooks and nettops have been getting lately, it would appear that small form factor (SFF) and all-in-one PCs are getting lost in the shuffle. That won't be the case for long, as according to DigiTimes' un-named sources at PC vendors, Intel is gearing up to launch three new 65W low-power quad-core CPUs specifically for these two market segments.

Core 2 Quad Q8200s (2.33GHz, 4MB L2 cache) - $245
Core 2 Quad Q9400s (2.66GHz, 6MB L2 cache) - $320
Core 2 Quad Q9550s (2.83GHz, 12MB L2 cache) - $369

From a specification standpoint, the new chips will be identical to existing CPUs with the same model number, but the TDP drops from 95W down to 65W. Vendors said to already be on board include Apple, Acer, Hewlett-Packard, and Dell, with Asus still mulling it over. But because the chips won't come gimped, the lower power draw could also make them popular choices for users with standard desktop setups concerned about heat management.

Pricing for the Q8200s, Q9400s, and Q9550s will sit at $245, $320, and $369 respectively for thousand-unit tray quantities.

Lite-On Predicts that Blu-Ray Combo Drives Will Go Mainstream in 2009, Burners in 2011

Paul Lilly — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 09:30:42 -0600

While Blu-ray continues to inch into living rooms amid lower prices, it won't be long until the high definition format becomes a mainstream feature in PCs, says Lite-On. The optical drive maker predicts 2009 as the year BD combo drives are a standard option in new PCs, with BD burners becoming commonplace by 2011.

By Lite-On's count, BD-ROM drives, BD combo drives, and BD burners are already showing signs of significant growth as the total number of global shipments has increased from 700,000 units in 2007 to 1.7 million in the first of 2008 alone.

But it all comes down to price, and OEMs will continue to charge between $100-$200 for BD combo drives in 2009, according to DigiTimes. Lite-On says the price of BD burners is expected to drop to between $50-$100 in 2011.

DRAM Maker ProMOS Seeks Government Bailout

Paul Lilly — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 13:45:00 -0600

The DRAM industry is facing its toughest time in the past 15 years with not much of a light at the end of the tunnel. Most memory companies have already reduced production and scaled back the workforce, but it has done little to change the fact that DRAM prices have already dropped close to cost. Could a government bailout be the answer?

That's exactly what ProMOS chairman ML Chen wants to see happen. Chen, whose company has already suffered losses adding up to US$675 million in the first three quarters of 2008, is calling for the Taiwan government to keep the industry afloat. Total losses for the entire industry currently sit at US$2.73 billion, a number which is expected to grow in the fourth quarter.

Chen, who said it would be a pity of the government gave up on DRAM makers who have given so much to the nation's semiconductor industry, would like to see some fundamental changes occur, like the development of home-grown technologies. Chen also said that the government should offer aid programs and restricted bank loans, which could only be used for technological research and development and not for capacity expansion.

Should the Taiwan government step in? Hit the jump and post your thoughts.

Corsair's Internal Benchmarks: Why 6GB is Better than 3GB

Paul Lilly — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 10:06:44 -0600

Intel's Core i7 release hasn't just changed the processor game, it's also ushered in a new era of memory choices. Up until Core i7, power users found themselves pondering whether to slap a 2GB or 4GB kit of RAM into their system, but that was before triple-channel memory. Now the choice (for upgraders and new builders) comes down to 3GB or 6GB, and Corsair looks to shed some light on the decision by performing some in-house benchmarking.

The tests, which were performed using an Asus P6T Deluxe motherboard, Core i7-965 Extreme Edition CPU, two Nvidia 280 GTX videocards in SLI, and two Seagate 320GB 7200.10 hard drives in a RAID 0 array, heavily favored the 6GB kit. Corsair's results were sometimes significant, with the minimum frame rate in World of Conflict jumping by 50 percent when upgrading from 3GB to 6GB, and netting over a 3-fold increase in Crysis Warhead. Even game loading times saw a boost.

"The analysis shows that 3GB of system memory is insufficient to run modern games, such as Warhammer Online and Crysis Warhead, resulting in poor performance," Corsair wrote (PDF). "The lack of memory when using 3GB of RAM results in increased hard disk drive access, sometimes called thrashing. This causes in-game stuttering, which reduces the minimum frame rate."

This isn't the first time Corsair has released internal benchmarks. Previously, the memory maker found that upgrading from 2GB to 4GB provided "significant performance benefits." This time around, Corsair says "the message to enthusiasts who are looking to build a Core i7 system for gaming is clear - installing 6GB of memory will provide significantly higher frame rates and a considerably smoother gaming experience."

Thoughts on Corsair's testing methodology or results? Hit the jump and let us know.

Solid-State Drive Review Roundup -- Performance & Drawbacks

David Murphy — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 18:00:00 -0600

Storage that uses flash memory is quite unlike the hard disk drives used to hold your computer’s data. The latter rely on speedy actuators to read and write information on spinning magnetic platters. SSDs use electrical charges to read and write the state of individual flash memory cells. An SSD’s flash memory is nonvolatile: Unlike your computer’s RAM, an SSD drive retains your data when you switch the power off. And since the handshake is electric, SSDs can access that data in a fraction of the time it takes a mechanical hard drive to do so.

Sounds ideal, right? Actually, the performance potential of SSDs needs to be weighed against some significant drawbacks. We’re going to outline the pros and cons of the technology and how it compares to traditional hard disk storage. We’re also going to put seven leading solid state drives to the test and let the benchmark numbers do the talking. At this stage in the storage race, an SSD is a big investment; we want to help you maximize your return.

Read on!